Martian sand...

Martian sand ... close up.  Via Curiosity, of course...

Gaming the system...

Gaming the system...  Megan McArdle has a useful post up, explaining how it appears that Obamacare customers (victims?) are gaming the system, and how that's undermining the entire financial underpinnings of Obamacare.

As I look around at news reports and our own experiences with Obamacare, it looks to me like the unraveling is (a) already well underway, and (b) damned close to inevitable.  I've been surprised by how many people I've met who have no comprehensive understanding of how Obamacare works – but who know at expert level exactly how they can get around the rules to their personal advantage.  That's the very essence of “gaming the system”. 

This particular game is tilted in favor of two groups: the young and healthy, and people making less than roughly $100k a year.  Those two groups are, of course, not mutually exclusive – quite the opposite.  We're in neither group, so our best bet (at the moment, anyway) seems to be to survive until Medicare eligibility.  Until then, we get to help pay for everyone else's healthcare.  And I won't be a bit surprised to discover that when I reach 65, the rules have been changed in a way that steals even more of our money.  If Bernie Sanders gets elected, burying money is going to look quite attractive...

Data tampering...

Data tampering...  Tony Heller has a great (and typically detailed) post up that shows rather convincingly how NASA has tampered with their weather data to bolster the case for anthropogenic global warming (AGW). 

This tampering is accomplished in a manner that's familiar to anyone who watches what the government does: they didn't lie about the actual data – they just “adjusted” it.  They adjusted the hell out of it. 

If you're a regular reader of this blog, then you know another blatant example of this data tampering: the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics presents unemployment.  The number that gets the publicity is not the actual number of unemployed people (though that's what most people believe), but rather an “adjusted” number.  That adjusted number shows a far lower unemployment percentage than the actual reality.

This tampering is just as blatant.  The graph at upper right is one of the “tells”: it shows how much the actual measured temperature has been adjusted for various years.  The numbers that NASA presents are the measured temperatures plus this adjustment.  If the measured temperatures stayed perfectly flat (and in fact they're not far off that), then after adjustment they'd show – what a surprise! – the infamous “hockey stick” increase.

Corruption takes many forms.  This is one of them...

“We’ve just legalized mortgage fraud.”

“We’ve just legalized mortgage fraud.” That's Kevin Williamson, writing at the National Review, and I can't think of a better way to summarize it.  More:

But Fannie Mae, the organized-crime syndicate masquerading as a quasi-governmental entity, has other ideas. Under its new and cynically misnamed “HomeReady” program, borrowers with subprime credit don’t need to show that they have enough income to qualify for the mortgage they’re after — they simply have to show that all the people residing in their household put together have enough income to qualify for that mortgage. We’re not talking just about husbands and wives here, but any group of people who happen to share a roof and a mailing address. And some non-residents can be added, too, such as your parents.

That would be one thing if all these people were applying for a mortgage together, and were jointly on the hook for the mortgage payments. But that isn’t the case. HomeReady will permit borrowers to claim other people’s income for the purpose for qualifying for a mortgage, but will not give mortgage lenders any actual claim against that additional income.

This is madness.

Madness, indeed.  But it seems of a piece with our government's careening toward socialism and fantasy-based reckoning...